Citizen Bitcoin Podcast Features Cory Klippsten of GiveBitcoin

GiveBitcoin founder Cory Klippsten joined Brady of the Citizen Bitcoin podcast to talk about creating the next wave of Bitcoiners, the importance of education on that journey, and the future of Bitcoin in the context of the current macroeconomic situation.

2/ Thanks to @Give_Bitcoin for sponsoring this episode. GiveBitcoin has solved the precoiner-to-bitcoiner equation: Give + Timelock + Educate = Bitcoiner. Check out the beta, which just went live at https://t.co/deX66rnJXm and and start minting some new hodlers in your life.

Brady: Welcome
to the Citizen Bitcoin podcast. I’m Brady, and I’m sharing my journey learning
Bitcoin, hoping it makes yours a bit easier. What’s up out there Bitcoiners,
hope you all are doing well. It’s another week here at the Dawn of the Bitcoin
Renaissance. Thanks for being here with me today, and I’ve got a great one with
Cory Klippsten for you. He’s the founder of GiveBitcoin. I’m excited to share
this conversation with you and also excited to be repping GiveBitcoin. As you
may have seen already on Twitter, GiveBitcoin is the first official sponsor of
the pod. So, big thanks to Cory for supporting my work and GiveBitcoin team for
investing in Bitcoin education in general

Brady: GiveBitcoin
is creating a clever new way to turn your pre coiner friends and family into
well educated hodlers. You can give to them Timelocked Bitcoin, it’s Timelocked
for at least a year, up to five years, and you’re hodler to be friend or family
member will receive, month by month for that first year, a world-class Bitcoin
education. It is such a great idea. So, check this out. This past weekend I was
talking to my dad and I told him about the sponsorship in GiveBitcoin. And that
conversation ended with him asking me for some Timelocked Bitcoin and the
GiveBitcoin education program for Christmas.

Brady: I’ve
been shilling him super hard for a couple of years, and so the fact that the
GiveBitcoin idea finally made him comfortable enough to take the plunge, says a
ton. I’ll be giving him some Bitcoin via GiveBitcoin soon and I’ll keep you all
updated on how it’s going for him. GiveBitcoin has solved that pre coiner to
Bitcoiner equation. It’s Give plus Timelock plus educate equals Bitcoiner. So,
check out GiveBitcoin right now. The beta was officially launched today at
beta.givebitcoin.io. Okay, we’ll get into all the details and context with Cory
in this conversation. So, let’s just jump right into it, here we go.

Cory Klippsten: Man,
I’m excited to be here. I was trying to earn my citizenship.

Brady: You’re
a sovereign citizen of Bitcoin, and you want to help a lot of people become
sovereign citizens of Bitcoin. So, I’m here for that man.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
No for sure. You seem to get more of the hardcore evangelists on more
frequently than anybody else. You literally built this product for them, so I’m
just glad to be in the company.

Brady: Yeah.
This is going to be a great tool for the evangelists among us. Before we get
too much farther, I’ve got to say a big thanks to you and GiveBitcoin for being
the first sponsor of this podcast. Our mutual dedication to helping people
understand what’s happening here and helping them become, like we said, good
citizens of Bitcoin in this Bitcoin future we’re building, I think makes us the
perfect partnership. So, I’m really happy man.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
listen man, it’s important to be in these things early because sometimes they
get to be a big deal and I think your trajectory is really good. I think this
is like getting into Bitcoin in like 2011 or something.

Brady: Yeah,
absolutely man. I agree completely. I think it’s going to get pretty crazy over
these next few years. It’s already been crazy.

Cory Klippsten: We’re
talking about the podcast, right?

Brady: Yeah.
Well, and just Bitcoin in general. But yeah, the podcast too. I mean, it’s on a
similar trajectory. I guess we’re all on the Bitcoin rocket ship at this point.

Cory Klippsten: IMB
is going to ask if the Brady podcast and Bitcoin actually have co-integration
with their high R-squared.

Brady: So
far we’re pretty well co-integrated. We’re going to be able to see after the
having… If the Citizen Bitcoin podcast isn’t over 55,000 downloads per episode
by next Christmas, then we’ll know that the model is broken.

Cory Klippsten: Awesome.
Well played.

Brady: Yeah.
Let’s talk about GiveBitcoin. Let’s start with the basics, and then we can dive
into some context and details behind the company. All right. So, let’s say
you’re sharing an Uber with a Bitcoiner, what’s the GiveBitcoin pitch to them?

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
sure. So, basically we would say Give plus Timelock plus educate equals
Bitcoiner. Basically, we’ve created a product that is intended to be the safest
and easiest way to onboard a new coiner. And then if you unpack that, basically
what we set out to do is to have the highest percentage chance of getting
somebody that you care about, like friend, family, colleague, or maybe just
somebody you met at a conference or something, to actually get them to take the
red pill and start learning and start to want to learn for themselves. And then
to have those good resources, something authoritative, something right down the
middle that’s good for Bitcoin, available to them and actually spoonfed to
them. Everything just came out of the genesis of that, or I should say the
kernel of that idea, and then what do you need to build around that to make
that happen?

Brady: I
definitely want to get into more of the details about the product. Got a lot of
questions for you there.

Cory Klippsten: Mm-hmm
(affirmative), for sure.

Brady: But
I’d like to get some of the context about the GiveBitcoin story, the mission.
Maybe some of your… Even go back as far as… I know you have an extensive
professional background, it’s really impressive. You can go back and talk about
some of that if you think it’s relevant to the GiveBitcoin story. And I’d also
like to hear your Bitcoin story, in general. Can you give us some of that
background and bring us up to that GiveBitcoin founding moment.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
yeah, for sure. Everybody has their… If we all end up in Bitcoin, you can point
to a number of things that led you to get there. But at the end of the day,
every human story on the globe is going to result in them becoming a Bitcoiner.
So, it’s just like a [inaudible 00:06:16].

Brady: Great,
because we’re talking about the largest market of any product, right?

Cory Klippsten: That’s
right. Yeah, half of every transaction. So, we’re all going to use Bitcoin at
some point and there’s going to be some way to construct a story out of your
background, and all the different waves and jagged lines, you can draw a
straight line through it in the end. I guess a few interesting nuggets where I
got super into decentralization and small scale and barbell strategies and some
of that by becoming obsessed with Nassim Taleb starting in 2002. So, it’s been
really awesome to see him get adopted as the Bitcoin philosopher because he’s
just so well aligned with all of the things that were [crosstalk 00:06:54].

Brady: You
were an early Taleb adopter?

Cory Klippsten: I
was an early Taleb adopter. I wish I had Taleb coin back in 2002, I’d be
crushing it right now. But I did get to meet him and talk to him a little bit
after he and Naval had a conversation. It was here in LA last year. So, that
was a seminal moment for me, I [inaudible 00:07:10] actually both of them
separately. It was awesome.

Brady: Wow,
that’s crazy.

Cory Klippsten: That’s
like my thought guru and my tech guru in the same place. So yeah, I was in the
front row. You can see a video of me and I’m just like I’ve seen Jesus

[inaudible 00:07:24]

or something. Watching these dudes talk nerd shit is
awesome.

Brady: That’s
awesome.

Cory Klippsten: So,
that was probably one. Another weird foundational thing that probably requires
beers or whiskey TFTC style is, I was actually… I was born in the Bay Area to
parents that met on Haight Ashbury and I was basically raised on a commune
until I was like eight. There was no money. So, that was super interesting. I
don’t even know how to start to unpack that. I’ll probably just do a whole
podcast on that with somebody at some point.

Brady: Yeah,
for sure.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
But it definitely was interesting because I was a really curious kid, studied
hard, and then I basically was thrust into mainstream society and public school
in fifth grade. It was like Jane Goodall with the apes trying to figure it all
out. I’ve always had these lens of trying to peel back and figure out what was
going on. I think that’s probably why I ended up first going to journalism
school trying to investigate more for undergrad. So, I have a broadcast degree
and I was a really crappy local TV reporter when I was like 19 and 20 for a
mid-Missouri NBC station.

Cory Klippsten: And
then, I ended up spending a good chunk… So, I was in tech initially, I went to
work for Microsoft on an early interactive television product and then decided
I wanted more money. I started to get greedy living out in New York and decided
to go to business school and figure out how do people actually get money
because I had absolutely no concept of one makes money from my childhood. So I
was like, “I don’t know, [inaudible 00:08:59] actually make money. Some people
seem to have more of it. How did they get that money?”

Cory Klippsten: But
yes, I went to University of Chicago, which is like a hotbed of econ. There are
some Austrians that have rolled through there and won some Nobel’s and stuff. I
was exposed a little bit there. Then I did a management consulting and private
equity for seven years post business school. And it wasn’t until… I was at
McKinsey & Company, which is a pretty well known consulting firm, and then
I basically set up a private equity consulting firm to compete with them. Did
that for a few years out of Chicago.

Cory Klippsten: And
then in 2009, I was right out of the crisis and… It was funny because my
formative career experience was being on the shaky foundation of the dot-com
boom because I got to go to all those parties in New York and all the Silicon
Alley, and Jason Calacanis, and all that stuff. Just so much free money
everywhere and it didn’t make any sense. I spent a year running the Jaguar
website for Ogilvy Interactive. It was the year of 2000. I’ve probably worked
like three hours a day or something and was probably maybe in the top five
performers out of a group of like 70.

Brady: Oh,
shit.

Cory Klippsten: I
was like, “Is this real life? This can’t be real.” It was almost with
gratification that the world didn’t actually… definitely had more than a little
schadenfreude with the crashing of the tech bubble because it kind of angered
me that this was all there was. What was funny is I then ran to go do something
that I thought was more solid, which was like, “Okay, let’s go to business
school and let’s learn how the world really works, and then go into
consulting.” Now all I saw was all of the companies that were on a much bigger
bubble, which was the entire financial system.

Brady: All
right.

Cory Klippsten: It
wasn’t just dot-com, it was like everything was on shaky foundation. I just
kept on trying to get on firm ground and not finding it. And then it finally
clicked with me; the only thing that you can really control is when you are
actually in control of something small. I think if you look at that, that’s
probably why I was attracted to startups in retrospect is because you can have
a lot of effect on a small business, and then as you grow it, you can either
get off the train when it becomes too big or if you maintain control and have
some agency, you can stick with it.

Brady: Totally.

Cory Klippsten: So,
a number of my good friends from running around New York had stayed in tech
that whole time and had built great companies and were really well networked,
and had big exits and stuff that. And so I had a good angle, and a good lens,
and a good way to network into early-stage tech.

Cory Klippsten: So,
I went to Google first and I worked there from 2011 to 2013. Got married in
late 2012, and we decided to move out to California. She wanted warm and I
really don’t actually like living in SF very much. So, we came to LA, which at
least was a short flight to Silicon Valley. And I had a good way to… I
basically met some 1500 VCs and founders in two years at Google, which gave me
the platform to jump out and mix it up in startups.

Cory Klippsten: So,
I’m like six and a half years now into being in startups, angel investing,
advising, and operating when I see a good opportunity. I was a co founder in an
ad tech company from 2013 to 2015. And then this is the second one that I’ve
really gone hard at as far as a startup where I’m a founder.

Brady: Super
exciting, man. Really exciting. You’re just the exact kind of entrepreneur that
we need to get in this space, and just tons of experience and bringing that
experience to bear on this industry is just a great story to hear. It’s
awesome. Let’s dig into your Bitcoin education a bit because this is…
GiveBitcoin is not just about gifting someone Bitcoin, the larger vision is
time locking that Bitcoin and then educating while that Bitcoin’s Timelocked so
that by the time that Bitcoin becomes accessible, you’ve minted a new
Bitcoiner. Tell me about your Bitcoin education-

Cory Klippsten: I
think I can go. You want to just talk about it for 20 minutes and I’ll come
back? That was perfect. So, my Bitcoin education… Maybe come at it from how I
went wrong. So, we built this product in a lot of ways to try to save Cory from
2014 because someone gave me $50 in Bitcoin in a blockchain wallet at a tech
conference. I remember the date, January 29th of 2014. And I proceeded to not
read the white paper, not go down the rabbit hole and lose the key. That sucks.
What a horrible missed opportunity.

Cory Klippsten: I
have the word Bitcoin in my Gmail from 2012. I had another chance where I was
helping a buddy sell off some angel and advisory stakes in a series LLC that
include… He built his company before it was earned 8216. I had to put together
a couple of slides about Bitcoin in that company, and this was December of
2016, and it still didn’t take. It actually took the noise from the Ethereum
run-up, basically, only the social pressure of… or just like the social
signaling of some really smart VCs that I respected jumping into the space and then
all the noise around consensus in May of 2017 is what finally got me.

Cory Klippsten: May
23rd, I remember it was just one phone call that I had scheduled and I just
heard the noise in the background and the fact that this guy quit one of the
best in VC. And it was just mixing it up in “crypto” is what made me start down
the rabbit hole.

Brady: What
kind of resources and people did you find most helpful?

Cory Klippsten: Well,
I guess I did read the white paper in that first week, so that was great. Got a
little bit of a foundation there. It’s funny, a lot of people talk about what’s
the lens through you see this? I definitely was seeing it through a tech lens.
I do a lot of work with marketplaces, and platforms, and SAS companies, in
particular. Trying to create marketplaces and platforms out of SAS companies
has been kind of a specialty.

Cory Klippsten: So,
I was super attracted to the flavor du jour in 2017 of like you can create
these Airbnb ecosystems that have their… what I would now call a friction
token, but their native token, and incentivize everybody to participate in this
ecosystem. That’s the writing that I was doing for myself at the time. I have
60 pages of total garbage that I would burn if it wasn’t on a hard drive
because it’s just so dumb now in retrospect. But I was really convinced-

Brady: We’ve
all been there, man.

Cory Klippsten: …
at the time that there was maybe something there. I saw it very much through
sign summer 2017 up, summer 2017 Cory should have been an internet union square
ventures or something. I was being spoon-fed that stuff and I was buying it.
So, I basically shit coined with my time. Thankfully, the core of it was always
Bitcoin, Bitcoin was all that I was actually stacking. But basically, it wasn’t
until probably March of 2018, the start of the winter, that I essentially
accepted Bitcoin into my life and forsook all others.

Brady: Took
the pledge to devote your life to-

Cory Klippsten: Basically.

Brady: …
the one true coin.

Cory Klippsten: The
funny thing, which I have talked about publicly before is at that time, I was
already sitting in a seat as president and chief investment officer of a
large-ish crypto fund that had stakes and a bunch ICOs, and I had done the
Everipedia deal where they took the $30 million equity investment from block
one. It helped robot cash, which is like a steam PC gaming competitor, like
sore through whether they should do a utility token and they ended up just
doing an equity deal and using more of a point system.

Cory Klippsten: So,
I was definitely shit coining crazy, and then it just clicked for me. I don’t
even remember what the nail in the coffin was for me as far as not wanting to
read another white paper ever again other than the Bitcoin one. It probably
just came down to understanding that security was everything and that anything

[inaudible 00:17:48]

… Basically, it wasn’t worth doing a public blockchain
unless it was money and until we came up with something else that was valuable
enough. That was the argument that really resonated with me is that it just
didn’t make sense to do one of these unless it was mine.

Brady: Yeah,
you just use a database, man, just with my SQL. It’s all you need basically.

Cory Klippsten: Basically.

Brady: Yeah.
For almost all of these ICOs.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
yeah, yeah. It’s interesting.

Brady: What
do you think about-

Cory Klippsten: No,
I think some of them are probably-

Brady: Go
ahead.

Cory Klippsten: I
was just going to say some of them have a future, but the future is actually
more airline miles or something like that. You certainly can have a token in an
ecosystem because that already exists, but you haven’t invented anything new
and you don’t need a blockchain for it. You can use one if you want to, but
it’s not secure. It’s going to be relatively centralized compared to Bitcoin
and it’s not going to drive this insane market cap value in the longterm
because it’s just points.

Brady: Yeah.
If you’re getting like American Airlines points, you don’t need a blockchain to
prove the scarcity of that point. American Airlines is in control of those
tokens or whatever those points. So they’re just going to live on… A private
database is all you need. What do you think about Liquid and RGB tokens on
lightning and stuff that? Do you think that… Can you imagine any use for those?
Obviously Liquid has an interexchange use case, which is pretty well proven at
this point. Like kim.com is launching a token.

Cory Klippsten: I
think you and I have both been privy to a lot of back and forth about that one
over the last several days.

Brady: Yeah.
We were talking about on Telegram earlier. What’s your take?

Cory Klippsten: I
don’t care.

Brady: I
don’t either.

Cory Klippsten: [inaudible
00:19:33] so just heads down, I’m like, “I don’t have enough time to just think
about Bitcoin and what it means.” I think you’ve seen some of the posts that
I’ve been doing trying to think through how this all plays out in the
long-term, because it’s like that is really what I’m concerned about because I
have a family, and I’m an entrepreneur, and I’m somewhat hinged to the success
of Bitcoin. I’m really thinking about system-level threats most of the day. I’m
just trying to alleviate any potential downside, even if it’s only 10% that the
US government decides to outlaw Bitcoin, I want to make sure that goes from 10%
down to 0.01%. So, spreading mass adoption to me and getting red pilling the
most number of people, I actually see that as a stronger imperative than
anything else because I believe in protecting the downside.

Brady: Yeah,
that’s a great way to put it, man.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
I think a well-known hedge fund that knows the space well passed along
privately the information that 7 million people on the globe own $100 or more
worth of Bitcoin. It’s not very many people owning very much Bitcoin. We’re
going to try to create 21 million Bitcoiners that actually understand Bitcoin
and give a shit and are stacking.

Brady: Love
it, man. That’s the goal, 21 million Bitcoiners.

Cory Klippsten: 21
million new Bitcoiners.

Brady: That’s
3X what we currently have right now.

Cory Klippsten: That’s
the goal.

Brady: Damn.
I can’t imagine we’ve 7 million hodlers with a decent amount of skin in the
game at this point has driven Bitcoin to $10,000 a coin 3X that and the network
effects that come with that. Meaning, if you guys directly onboard 21 million
Bitcoiners, the second third-order effects of that adoption is going to be 100
million Bitcoiners.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
well, I think the only way that’s going to happen is actually essentially turning
all Bitcoiners into a Bitcoin sales force as a marketing team for Bitcoin. Word
of mouth and people you care about is the way that most things are actually
spread. If I needed to buy a new laptop, the first thing I do is just text my
brother-in-law because he’s the nerd. He’s got a new Ag every day and he’ll
tell me exactly what to buy. Whatever refurbished thing that he just got for
cheap, I’ll just buy the newer version of that.

Cory Klippsten: So,
basically, that’s what we’re doing. We want new coiners to learn about Bitcoin
from people that actually care about them and want them to get involved in
Bitcoin. And that goes both ways, by the way. So, it’s not just giving Bitcoin,
it’s also… Let’s say there’s a Gen Z or millennial, or someone that wants to
get Bitcoin, they can put Bitcoin on their wishlist and they can ask all of
their rich relatives and friends or social followers or colleagues or whatever,
and basically say, “I want Bitcoin for Christmas, birthday, graduation, bar
mitzvah, wedding. So, it basically spreads both ways.

Brady: Nice.
So, a user could just give a URL out for the requests for Bitcoin to their
GiveBitcoin account?

Cory Klippsten: That’s
right.

Brady: Okay.

Cory Klippsten: That’s
right.

Brady: That’s
right.

Cory Klippsten: You
can post that on social and you can promote that on your YouTube. It’s all
individuals right now, but very soon we’ll have courses-

Brady: Courses,
yeah.

Cory Klippsten: …
institutions, all kinds of stuff.

Brady: That’s
rad, man. I love it. All right, well this is a good chance to dive into the
product a bit more. Can you walk us through the user experience on both ends,
like the sender and the receiver?

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
sure. So, let’s say that there’s a hypothetical person named Brady, and Brady
has someone that he wants to become a Bitcoiner. Let’s say that person’s name
is Niall. And so Brady meets Niall and thinks that Niall has the makings of
good Bitcoiner because Niall is a human. And so, Brady says, “Hey, Niall, I’m
going to send you some Bitcoin. What’s your email address?” And you get Niall’s
email address and this will be a phone number too soon. Just email to start.
And it basically just very quickly takes less than 60 seconds to initiate the
gift. You decide how much you want to give. Your choices of the Timelock are
one year, five years, or choose any data in between. So, minimum, one year,
max, five years.

Cory Klippsten: Niall
now gets an email that says, “Hey, Brady gave you $21 worth of Bitcoin, click
here to claim it.” So, basically, then Niall goes and signs up for an account.
This account is… And this is where it gets a little hairy, and this is
definitely a trade-off where we want it fast and easy and we want the best
chance of success, and the Timelock is really important. And then actually
owning the Bitcoin and you being able as the giver to… Essentially, if you want
to be involved, you can, but if you don’t want to be and you want to wash your
hands of it and outsource Bitcoin, IT support, and education to us completely
and never talk to that person again, you can.

Cory Klippsten: We
do use a custodian, so it is Prime Trust on the back end. The recipient opens
an account through us, essentially opens a user segregated account that holds
their Bitcoin for them at Prime Trust. We never actually have any access to the
account information nor the, obviously, the actual currency on the dollar side
of the transaction, nor the Bitcoin side. I should mention, you can only
liquidate dirty fiat for beautiful orange coin on our platform, you’re not
allowed to actually give away your own Bitcoins.

Brady: Nice.

Cory Klippsten: You
have to hold those. You want to actually be part of our career. You have to
hodl all your coins. Then they open an account and accept the gift. For larger
gifts where you wouldn’t want to get hit as the giver with a, “Well, what was
that transaction again?” So for larger gifts over 50 bucks, you have to accept
within 30 days. If it’s less than 50 bucks, then they actually have a full year
to accept their gift and we’ll be prompting them and reminding them along the
way that they have this gift waiting.

Brady: Right
on. That makes sense.

Cory Klippsten: And
the nice thing is like loading up a USB stick or something that and actually
having to put the Bitcoin on it and give it to them, and then either that
Bitcoin has gone or you’ve actually maintained ownership of that and they’re
keeping a private key copy in the background just in case they lose it. The
transaction never happens unless they are signed up for the platform. If they
sign up for the platform, they are getting 12 account statements with what’s
going on with their Bitcoin value. And in every one of those account statements
is another lesson from the Bitcoin curriculum. They’re getting the 12 lessons.
If your bank account is debited, they’re getting the 12 lessons.

Brady: Cool.
So, what are those lessons like? Who’s developing it and what topics are you
going to be covering? Are you guys going to talk about shit coins at all or are
you going to just focus completely on Bitcoin? I mean, not talk about shit
coins in a good way, but warn people about shit coins, or just focusing on
Bitcoin?

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
we are focusing 100% on Bitcoin. I wouldn’t wish any of those other ones on
people that I care about, like friends and family or other humans. So, it’s all
Bitcoin. I feel like all of this effort that’s been put into education over the
last couple of years and some of the good books that have come out like Yan
Pritzker’s inventing Bitcoin and obviously Saifedean’s book and Rabbi’s book
and some of the other ones, they’re all kind of coming toward a pretty good
sense of how to play it down the middle. And then it’s all just variations on
that. So, we’re going to try really hard in that first one to hook somebody on
Bitcoin and try a few different analogies and different angles to get them
interested and start them down the rabbit hole. Hopefully they actually read
ahead.

Cory Klippsten: The
whole curriculum will actually be available. They don’t have to wait if they
want to read ahead. And then module two will probably be more what is money,
what’s wrong with our money? Like why is it so bad? Why did we need this new
money? And then, three is going to be a lot more about [inaudible 00:28:21],
like what it is as a hard currency, and as a settlement there, and things that.
And so you can kind of imagine the natural progression. We’ll get into some low
tie-up time preference. We’ll probably have one module that’s just stories of
people that came into Bitcoin and how it changed their life, that kind

[crosstalk 00:28:40]

–

Brady: Nice,
I like to hear that.

Cory Klippsten: …
a little bit the middle chapters of the Bitcoin standard and stuff. And then
later chapters are going to be heavily influenced by people Matt Odell who’s
another advisor and part-owner of the company along with Saifedean, and then
Yan Pritzker and Stephan Livera. So, there’ll be a lot more technical stuff
from Stephan and Ragnar, Guns N’ Bitcoin, and Matt in the later chapters
talking about cold storage and self-sovereignty, the importance of running a
node, private transactions, things that.

Brady: Nice.

Cory Klippsten: And
what’s in the future for Bitcoin. That’s kind of how we’re spacing it out.

Brady: Very
cool. So, let’s say someone who’s been gifted some GiveBitcoin. And they start
going through the material and they’re sold and they start getting into the,
“All right, what is this whole thing about sovereignty and holding my own keys,
and running a node and et cetera.” Well, at that point I would assume that that
person might want to start procuring Bitcoin that they can hold.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah.

Brady: And
it’s not-

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
that’s right.

Brady: …
not Timelocked anymore.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
that’s right. Yeah. They all have the option of buying right there through us.

Brady: Cool.

Cory Klippsten: And
they’ll be able to Timelock that if they want or not. So, we actually have some
people that want to. I think there’s the hashtag proof of Hodl, which is
basically when somebody is like, “You know what, I might have a little bit of a
weekend and I’m just going to Timelock this.”

Brady: Yeah,
yeah.

Cory Klippsten: Not
necessarily the greatest on self-sovereignty and key storage, and so I’d rather
just leave this with Prime Trust, which also custody’s finance and bit treks
and will be okay asking a bunch of funds and companies and OTC desks. It’s a
pretty good setup.

Cory Klippsten: But
our education and our whole bent is all about what’s good for Bitcoin, which is
really all about self custody and self-sovereignty. And so, we’re going to be
educating about nodes and I’m sure we’ll develop partnerships with the cold
cards and the courses of the world [inaudible 00:30:41] from multisig and stuff
that. And really just educate about what’s out there and go through the list of
the Bitcoin, only people that really have what’s best for Bitcoin in mind with
their product development, and help promote those companies and encourage
people to either do it direct where you can actually just buy and it goes
straight into your Bitcoin address that you’ve preloaded, or we’ll basically
let you buy and then immediately switches to you.

Brady: Sure.

Cory Klippsten: We’re
going to have… We encourage DCA and try to get people to sign up for repeat
purchases. That’s literally the easiest, most feel-good process that you could
have to be stacking.

Brady: That’s
awesome. Are you guys buying your Bitcoin daily or weekly? And then do you…
Actually you have the automated process that then puts it into, you said, it was
a user-defined account, so each person has a separate account at Prime Trust?

Cory Klippsten: That’s
right. Yeah. So, initially, it’s batch daily, so all the orders… Basically,
everyone who accepts on a given day, their givers accounts are then debited on
that day and the aggregate amount of that is purchased. This is all just
handled by a payment processor on the backend, but it’s basically small-ish
days are just bought on Crack, and then large-ish days are Cumberland, the OTC
desk.

Brady: Yeah.
So, the vision is pretty broad actually. Like this is sort of a… I guess you
would call it kind of an MVP that you’re launching now and it has just the
basic GiveBitcoin functionality and time locking and et cetera. But the way
that-

Cory Klippsten: It’s
utility. It’s utility. Everything that Twitter has done over the last 12 years
has basically just been serving the needs of users that signed up for that
initial utility to broadcast a message to anybody that followed you.

Brady: Yeah.

Cory Klippsten: And
it’s similar. We see it as a core function, but then you can expand and you end
up naturally expanding into all of these other things to serve that user base.

Brady: Exactly.

Cory Klippsten: One
thing I really wanted to touch on, which is I think… We’ve built this thing, we
started coding July 1st and we’re live now. So, if you post this right away,
it’ll be at, for your users, beta.givebitcoin.io but the main URL will have the
full site in the next couple of weeks after we just work out the final kinks,
but everything’s working, and you’re welcome to go and start banging around and
trying it out.

Brady: It’s
exciting.

Cory Klippsten: We
develop really fast. I’m actually a part-owner of the dev shop that is building
it. So, we get special access and do everything really quickly.

Brady: Nice.

Cory Klippsten: We’re
building out a really robust affiliate program for referrals now. I talked
about how the main thrust of my career and startups the last half-decade has
been about trying to create these places to let a thousand flowers bloom. You
don’t know who’s going to be the best at talking about Bitcoin and marketing
Bitcoin. Maybe some kid at Toledo University that just crushes it with his
Bitcoin meet-up and has dope presentations and leverages some of our videos and
passes out pamphlets that get everybody jazzed about Bitcoin. We’re going to be
splitting our fees 50% with our referrers-

Brady: Nice.

Cory Klippsten: …
that market and educate people about Bitcoin. We’re doing the curriculum, but
if this thing goes well and we have some revenue and able to take in some
investor dollars and have the resources, basically what we want to do is we
want to have a really good repository of Bitcoin educational resources that
anyone can use and then go and turn on their community and their network to
Bitcoin and then actually monetize their own evangelism through us, and stack
SATs like nobody’s ever stacked SATs before.

Brady: That’s
amazing, man. I love that vision. There’s tons of examples of that model being
super successful in retail and other products. I could see a [inaudible
00:35:01] building up some huge Bitcoin church in evangelists in Australia, and
just-

Cory Klippsten: He’s
going to have a congregation [crosstalk 00:35:09].

Brady: Yeah.
For real. I am more and more buying into this analogy of a Bitcoin and religion,
secular religion of course, but they have similarities between… The way
religions have developed and the way Bitcoin is spreading, are extremely
similar. You just can’t ignore it. I saw on your deck that you quoted one of
GG’s tweets about this. So, you seem to be on board with it too, and you’re
using all kinds of religious terminology here. So, your investors and
stakeholders, what do they think about this kind of what I would assume seems a
really far out idea to the people who are in the mainstream and not in our
little bubble?

Cory Klippsten: That’s
how I see it and I definitely am crazy evangelist for better or worse, I think
better. But that’s powerful. That’s powerful. What I talk about a lot is
seeking 100% alignment with Bitcoin. One of my actually super smart friends out
in New York actually knows randomly the gifting industry really well, and he
made the point to me a few days ago that in the world of gifting, you don’t
market the gifting product, you market the gift.

Cory Klippsten: And
so basically all we need to do is talk about Bitcoin and make as many people as
we possibly can talk about Bitcoin, and then give them a way… If they want to
monetize through that, then they can. The fact that they’re going to be
monetizing in SATs… I don’t know about you but I have a weird mental accounting
thing where I just believe that Bitcoin is going up so much that whatever SATs
I earn when I think about it in dollar terms, I just automatically 10X it.

Cory Klippsten: I’ll
jump through all kinds of ways. I don’t sit there and do stupid SATs earning
things on my phone. One of these junky new things out of Asia, but they
actually give you SATs for clicking on which images have streetlight and-

Brady: Wait,
wait, wait. I haven’t heard about this.

Cory Klippsten: I’ll
find it for you, dude. I’ll find it for you. Brekkie Von Bitcoin and I have
been wasting some time earning double and triple-digit SATs for tasks.

Brady: That’s
hilarious.

Cory Klippsten: Totally
not. I’m earning like a penny for three minutes or something. It’s the dumbest
use of time, but I’m earning SATs.

Cory Klippsten: Right.
It made me look super smart, but I actually think that people would… rather
than clicking on the streetlights in the pictures being a tap monkey, I think
people would much rather evangelize Bitcoin and try red pill Bitcoiners and be
able to monetize that.

Brady: Yeah,
absolutely.

Cory Klippsten: So,
we’re going to try to build that platform that lets people do what they
naturally want to do anyway, which is, talk about Bitcoin and try to get other
people involved.

Cory Klippsten: …
is an investor from Adaptive Capitals. He’s a great analyst. I don’t know if
anybody else is actually comfortable with talking about them publicly, but we
can definitely talk about the advisory board, which is obviously super
important because those are the people that are actually developing the
curriculum with us. So, we’re interviewing our curriculum advisors and that is
what is becoming the curriculum. So, Saifedean Ammous, he’s an advisor and
part-owner of the company. Stephan Lavera, Matt Odell, Yan Pritzker, Meltem
Demirors. Gary Leland from Bit Block Boom. Michael Caras, the Bitcoin rabbi,
Ragnar Lifthrasir from Guns N’ Bitcoin. Brekkie Von Bitcoin, obviously. Got to have
art represented.

Cory Klippsten: Did
you see his new series where he’s… And this is actually where we want to go
with this too. If we really can take this platform… We’re right down the middle
and have one curriculum now, but we’ve always thought about you might pitch
Bitcoin differently or talk about it differently to your 65-year-old grandma
versus a 13-year-old bar mitzvah kid. So, Brekkie has a series out where he’s
saying how do you pitch Bitcoin to a vegan? How do you pitch Bitcoin to a
Buddhist? Yeah, absolutely, we want to have all that on there too.

Brady: Yeah.
I love that. I love it.

Cory Klippsten: We’ll
get there.

Brady: So,
is that the series that he did for Tantra Labs?

Cory Klippsten: Yes,
yes.

Brady: I’ll
have to link to it.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
for sure. Yeah. So, he’s an advisor to us and we’ll probably sell some rec yard
on the site and stuff that.

Brady: Sweet.
Sweet. Yeah. I love the Bitcoin art stuff. When there’s a movement, especially
if you’re getting into this religious territory, art is super important to
making the case and memeing it into existence as Blitzstein would say.

Cory Klippsten: Absolutely.
Well, we like to say GiveBitcoin number go up.

Brady: [crosstalk
00:40:43].

Cory Klippsten: Actually,
I should… One of Brekkie’s colleagues at Tantra is actually the computer
genius that does all their algos and stuff is this guy Russell. And Russell is
actually a Yogi and rocks the orange pants and everything. So, we were all
hanging out at a conference a few weeks back. He and Brekkie came up with a
mudra, which I guess is… it looked a gang sign to me, but you basically you put
your hand out as if you’re giving or accepting a gift and then you point up
that number go up. So, it’s kind of GiveBitcoin number go up. So, now we’re
starting to throw up our gang sign mudra pictures.

Brady: That’s
amazing. That’s amazing. I love it.

Cory Klippsten: You
got a meme man, you got a meme [crosstalk 00:41:24].

Brady: In
all ways, shapes, and forms.

Cory Klippsten: It
shall be so. It was dictated from up on high by a Bitsy Moses.

Brady: I
love it. All right, well, we’ve touched on this a little bit, but I want to ask
it in a way that I think might get us a little bit more out of it. I think many
Bitcoiners do the… The Bitcoin is inevitable. It really it’s about this
economic truth of sound money that will assert itself one way or the other. So,
given that belief… And I’ve had people push back on me on this front too, some
people might say, “Why is Bitcoin education something we should even care
about? Because, it’s just going to happen anyway.” What do you have to say
about that? Like why is Bitcoin education important if we assume that Bitcoin
is going to happen no matter what?

Cory Klippsten: Do
you want it to happen for you during your life and for your kids? Do I want my
kids to grow up and hit their earning years in a time when it’s much more fair
and rational, and the market place that they go to work in is bigger and much
more friction-free and doesn’t have all these friction tokens between each
different country with their questionable governments printing money? I’d to
pull that future forward as much as possible.

Brady: For
sure.

Cory Klippsten: And
that only happens through our disperse and collective efforts to educate and
proselytize and bring about this future. Not to mention that… Well, I don’t
think Bitcoin can be killed, I think it could certainly be hampered. So, if the
US government decides to make it illegal one day, well, even if there’s some
small chance of that happening, I want to make sure that it doesn’t happen. I
want to protect that downside. So, educating and getting it in the hands.

Cory Klippsten: I
love what the rabbi did, getting Bitcoin money basically crowdfunding and
getting people to buy 535 copies of the book and having them sent to the
offices of every Congressman and Senator. I would love to do that for 535
senators and reps and maybe a bunch of more people too. I think the gift cap is
50 bucks, and their email addresses are public, so maybe I’ll just do a little
crowdfunding campaign and raise 25 grand and send $49 to each of their email
addresses. $49 [crosstalk 00:43:52].

Brady: Yeah.
Imagine getting Bitcoiners to do the same thing to their representatives in
their constituencies. Like I could send 49 bucks to my representative and both
my senators, that’s-

Cory Klippsten: That’s
a really good idea.

Brady: …
147 bucks. But imagine you get 100 of those or 200 of those in your office,
you’re not going to be able to ignore that.

Cory Klippsten: Well,
I think you just gave me a really good idea, now I have to… I think you know
Bryant, our marketing guy, but I think what we need to do… Because I think we
need to go state by state and we need to make it a year-long campaign.
Basically, we’ll do Iowa, it will be the first week of the year, and we’ll
basically crowdfunding and then disperse to their reps. Maybe we’ll go
downstate sending guys and everybody basically crowdfund the Iowa political
class, and then the next week we’ll do Oklahoma, and the next week it’ll be and
the next week it’ll be Massachusetts.

Brady: I
love it.

Cory Klippsten: Basically
just knock out one state each week.

Brady: I
love it.

Cory Klippsten: But,
yeah. I think that… It’s just nice to have a mechanism through which that’s
possible.

Brady: Yeah,
exactly.

Cory Klippsten: Because
you pointed it out, once the utility exists, then you’re basically building a
platform that people can use a bunch of different ways. They’ll be creative
about it. We’ll have some ideas but I don’t think we’ll have the best ideas. I
think other people will have much better ideas on how to spread Bitcoin

[inaudible 00:45:13]

, we’re just going to help make it possible.

Brady: Yeah,
exactly. The other thing I think about with Bitcoin education a lot is besides
just speeding things up, I think it’s really important to help create a more
peaceful transition. I think if we have a certain critical mass of education,
one, we’ll create a political class that understands Bitcoin and is
incentivized because they own some to help create a world where Bitcoin is able
to thrive.

Brady: But
two, there’s a certain number of people that just understand it in general. I
think there’s less likelihood that some kind of government propaganda could
create a situation where there’s pro-Bitcoiners and anti-Bitcoiners and there’s
just kind of literally physical violence that happens between people, or just
state-level violence too to enforce bans and things that. A lot of that I think
would be much less likely to happen if we are proactive about getting this
message out there and educating very aggressively.

Brady: Yeah,
no, it’s just something I think about quite a bit. I am extremely driven to
educate about Bitcoiner, obviously. And I think a lot of us are, but that’s one
of the main motivations I see. One is exactly what you’re saying. I want this
future to come from my kids sooner than later. My daughter’s eight years old,
she’s going to be out on her own making her way and trying to figure out what
she wants to do for career and all that in just 10 years, which is not that far
away. So, I feel we have a ton of work in this critical next decade, the second
decade of Bitcoin’s life to really bring that… like you said, pull that future
forward. I love that turn of phrase.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
I think that’s right. Yeah. We’re experimenting with… A tagline that I think we
really want to push out and… Don’t steal it guys… But actually process of
trademarking it… is own the future, just started using that hashtag on Twitter
and I really that idea of if this is going to be the future money, don’t you
want to own the future-

Brady: That’s
a good one, man.

Cory Klippsten: …
and pull that future forward

Brady: Yeah,
I get it.

Cory Klippsten: That
makes a lot of sense.

Brady: So,
as we start building out what I’ve been calling the Bitcoin education industry
because I see a lot of companies moving in that direction. I think it’s going
to be as we scale up, like we said, 7 million Bitcoiners holding a hundred or
dollars or the Bitcoin, that’s just tiny. So, there’s going to be… There’s so
many people to educate and bring up to speed on what we’ve been wandering
around the rabbit hole for the last few years. There’s tons of work to do. Do
you think that Bitcoin education will more likely be included as part of other
Bitcoin services? Like GiveBitcoin or Cash App or Lolly? Or do you foresee
dedicated education businesses, something like what Stephan is doing with
Ministry of Nodes? Or just both, I guess, developing simultaneously. Which one
do you think makes more sense?

Cory Klippsten: I
think it’s all kind of the same thing, I think. And it’s the same people are
involved in all of it. Obviously, it’s great to have Stephan’s input on what
we’re doing and have somebody that can read a module and tell us that section
is stupid and you forgot this. That’s super crucial. The work that he’s doing
with Ministry of Nodes where he’s learning exactly how to red pill Australians
often with hand-to-hand combat in seminars, and meet-ups, and stuff. That’s
incredible primary research for someone like us that’s trying to go a little
bit more scaled.

Cory Klippsten: And
then you’ve got obviously what Saifedean is doing with his MOOCs. He just quit
Academia and he’s basically just teaching econ, Austrian economics, which is
going to have a healthy dose of Bitcoin in it. I’ve got a few friends that…
I’ve watched a couple of the lectures and I’ve got a couple of friends that
have gone through all 10, and it’s really good and it’s… You just can’t really
get that kind of attention.

Cory Klippsten: I’m
not talking about just the video lectures. You’re getting a lot of access to
him. You can email him any time. He’s got office hours where he joins and you
can talk to him by video conference. He’s really able to access his students in
a way that he couldn’t even when he was on campus. I think it’s super
interesting that people are taking these different models. I love the effort
that my brother from down under, Alex Fedski with Amber, which has a DCA App,
dollar-cost-average app. He’s got the Bitcoin times, he just put out a 36 page
PDF that has some really good angles on intro to Bitcoin. Love that.

Cory Klippsten: There’s
so much good stuff out there. Our twist on it is we are specifically targeting
a new coiner that came into Bitcoin in this particular way. So, it’s very
specific to our platform, and then we expand out from there. It’s actually
written in a question and answer format and the questions are the new coiner
that just got their Bitcoin. And it’s like, “Why did they give me a Bitcoin?
What is Bitcoin?” And then we have an answer, reading it out. We have a really
good voiceover actor to read the questions and then naturally we have a guy
from crypto economy reading the answers.

Brady: Very
cool. That makes sense. All right, man. I’m so excited about GiveBitcoin. I
think this is going to be really fun to watch rollout and people get their
hands on it. To finish up, I want to zoom out a little bit and talk a little
bit more about just Bitcoin’s future, the situation that we’re in right now,
maybe speculate a little bit about what’s going to happen in the near term and
then maybe have some fun speculating more distant just for a good time. What’s
your take on the macroeconomic situation that we’re in right now and how
Bitcoin is going to respond, I guess, to it in the next few years?

Cory Klippsten: I
think in absence of seeing Bitcoin in a financial crisis and also understanding
where probably most of the money from Bitcoin has probably been coming for the
last five years, it’s hard for me to see that we are going to go up when the
broad market goes down. Interestingly, I think probably the best thing for
Bitcoin is a huge bull market from here, in US equities in particular.

Cory Klippsten: So,
this is like the Tom Lee viewpoint. Fundstrat is saying S&P goes to 18,000
over the next 10 years, and that we’re actually about to begin a crazy bull
market. At least in nominal terms, it’s hard to argue that that doesn’t have a
possibility. I think the countervailing is like, “This thing can’t go on
forever. This time is different, and we’re building on a house of cards and we
were just printing all this money.”

Cory Klippsten: The
ability of governments to keep printing money and keep things going has been
well underestimated going back to 2012. Remember this whole thing was supposed
to unravel in 2012, and every year it’s supposed to have unraveled. So, I don’t
know. I do know that… I think if there’s a crash that I think that coin is
still predominantly a risk-on asset, and that I think a lot of people will pull
money out of Bitcoin, at least initially if there’s a crash. Obviously my hope
is that people pile back in, but I don’t think that it’s good for the Bitcoin
price if there’s an economic crash.

Brady: Yeah.
I hadn’t heard this Tom Lee take because everything I’m… Maybe I’m just in some
kind of doom and gloom economic bubble.

Cory Klippsten: No.
You’re on the same Bitcoin Twitter that I’m on, and all we want to look at is
how F’d up the financial system is. But remember an S&P that goes up that
much is still nominally priced. It’s not in real terms. And it goes along with
the world moving to negative interest rates everywhere. It goes along with
essentially horrifying stats out there that I’ve seen recently is that 95% of
the positive debt yield globally is US.

Cory Klippsten: So,
this then gets into… I think Nick Batya’s piece either came out today or is
about to come out this week where he’s basically going to explain… I think it’s
just the academic explanation of what Trace always talks about with the
different silos of global assets, and then Bitcoin has to fill its silo. He
basically is going to make this case that we’re going to end up in US
treasuries, gold and Bitcoin as being the three assets that people try to hold
and have exposure to essentially thinking about it as money or cash. That’s
probably where we’re headed with Bitcoin and the relative value of those and
how they trade. We’ll see.

Cory Klippsten: But
treasuries do still have a positive yield, whereas dollars obviously still have
a negative yield. But Nick’s really strong vociferous point and I think he’s
right as a finance profit. USC has been thinking about Bitcoin nonstop for six
years, so he’s probably right, is that we shouldn’t be thinking about Bitcoin
competing with US dollar. It’s actually a much more US treasuries, and that’s
really what has the target on its back for Bitcoin is treasuries.

Brady: That
makes sense. So, how long do you think his battle will play out between Bitcoin
and The Fed?

Cory Klippsten: Again,
that’s the treasury department, not The Fed because The Fed prints the dollars
and the dollars will, in fact, inflate significantly against Bitcoin over time.

Brady: Okay.
Got you.

Cory Klippsten: But
the treasuries, which is like the power of the US consumer and all of our
entrepreneurship and our massive geographic and demographic advantages over
every other country on the planet, and the US military securing the future. I
very much subscribed to the Stratford, George Friedman, Peter’s iron view of
things that the 21st century is actually the American century, the 20th century
was just a preview. So, I actually think that US extends its power and becomes
further entrenched as the one that called them in, global political power that
actually matters.

Cory Klippsten: We’re
not heading for a multipolar world. We’re not heading for splintering. This is
the century of American dominance and even the rise of Bitcoin, I think that
happens alongside of it. And that our best bet for securing the future of
Bitcoin is actually getting people to see it as the most American, most
patriotic, most literally aligned with the views of the founding fathers taking
up… basically taking all the energy from Ron Paul’s 1992 presidential run and
making that go wide and making a Bitcoin instead of gold.

Brady: Yeah.
That’s amazing. So, you think we’ll be able to then shift back to some kind of
a Bitcoin standard then in the future in America and, I guess, globally?

Cory Klippsten: Well,
again, this is where I think that Trace and Nick probably have it right. You
can have a Bitcoin standard as long as people are able to price things in
Bitcoin. That’s all that’s really required. So, there were still plenty of
other currencies being used all around the world on the gold standard doing the
industrial revolution, [BelloPolk 00:57:36] late 18th century, whatever. There
were still local currencies, but there was also a gold price and everybody knew
what it would cost in gold as well or in Bank of England banknotes.

Cory Klippsten: So,
I think that will probably accelerate a lot faster than people think. We’re
probably 15 years away from actually most people around the world using Bitcoin
as a unit of account. And that’s because it’s going to be easier to use Bitcoin
as a unit of account than it is going to be using gold or treasuries. So, those
are the three big assets. And you should have Nick on because… I haven’t even
read it and I’ve talked to the guy twice, and I don’t understand 1000th of what
he does about this stuff, but it just makes sense because Trace has been
talking about this for so long about these assets silos and that we just need
to fill the grain silo that is Bitcoin, but it doesn’t mean the other silos go
away.

Brady: Right.
Okay, that makes sense.

Cory Klippsten: And
then the other thing that’s dovetailing with all of this for me is Saife’s new
area of research and is just starting to lay out his thinking about… that we
might just do dollarize instead of hyper inflate the dollar. That’s probably a
much more likely outcome is that we actually… As demand for dollars gets
siphoned off by Bitcoin, they’re not going to supply the same amount of
dollars. They’ll cut the supply because they only supply dollars based on the
demand. That’s actually how The Fed works anyway.

Cory Klippsten: People
don’t really realize, The Fed doesn’t actually set rates to dictate what banks
do, The Fed sets rates in response to the requests for loans from their member
banks. The Federal is owned by the banks. It’s a private company that’s a
consortium of the big banks basically on Fed. And if the banks have a bunch of
demand for loans from businesses, then they go to The Fed and say, “We need
more money to lend out.” And then The Fed goes and basically creates the money
to supply those loans.

Cory Klippsten: If
there’s no demand for the loans, they won’t create the dollars. So, when people
don’t want dollars for their business and they prefer Bitcoin, The Fed’s not
going to create money. So, if you reduce supply and demand, we have a good
chance at not hyper-inflating and having much more of a soft landing for the
dollar when it’s still around, but there’s a lot less of that.

Brady: Yeah.
Yeah. That makes sense. I have heard Saife teasing that idea out a bit. It’s
encouraging to imagine that not having… I think a lot of Bitcoiners have
assumed in the past some major money battle play out. But it’s just people
saying… Yeah, the market demand is like, “We want Bitcoin, we want to get paid
in Bitcoin.” “Okay, we’ll start paying you in Bitcoin.” And then it’s just
inevitable from there. Other people start pricing services and goods in
Bitcoin. And then, yeah, you just kind of phase out the dollar over time. Makes
sense.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah.

Brady: All
right. Just for fun, I’m sure you’ve daydreamed about this at least a little
bit. What do you think a Bitcoin future looks in the more distant future like
50 years from now?

Cory Klippsten: There’ll
probably be a lot of salvage crews going out into the lakes and the oceans
trying to find all of this boating accident Bitcoin that they read about on
Twitter archives. So, it’d be like, “Wow, that guy talked about Bitcoin a lot.
He lived in Ohio 2018 when you had his boating accident. There’s always so many
lakes in Ohio.” Bitcoin boating accident treasure hunt will be a huge growth
industry. Mine is actually somewhere at the bottom of the Marina here in Los
Angeles.

Brady: I
lost mine at Clinton Lake. I was just getting pulled on one of those tubes?
Tubes getting pulled and just like I don’t know what. I had my ledger with me.
I don’t know.

Cory Klippsten: Bitcoins
fell right out of your pocket, it happens-

Brady: Which
is crazy.

Cory Klippsten: …
it sunk. [crosstalk 01:02:00].

Brady: Yeah.
So, figure out how to get the Bitcoin 50 years from now off a water logged

[inaudible 01:02:04]

.

Cory Klippsten: That’s
right. That’s right. I hope that 50 years from now that this… I think maybe the
most analogous future for us as we decentralize a bit and head more toward one
great commercial union where Bitcoin is the language by which we coordinate
activity and essentially talk to each other around the world. You get rid of
all these friction tokens and get rid of using money as a weapon, which money
is totally weaponized around the world, maybe primarily by the US but indeed by
many other countries as well.

Cory Klippsten: If
you can get rid of that, I think what you may have is a global version of the
most successful empire that ever existed, which isn’t written about very much,
but the Phoenician Empire was around for a couple of thousand years. Most of
what we consider… Our fantastic traditional culture was from the Eastern
Mediterranean. This is where Nassim Taleb, my… Sorry, my favorite philosopher
is from Lebanon. Saifedean, Palestinian. I don’t think it’s any coincidence
that they come from that tradition, the land of Ruby, all these great
Mediterranean towns there.

Cory Klippsten: Traditionally,
that was just a commercial empire and they didn’t fight wars, they were
traders, and they had immense wealth, great knowledge and developed societies
that have lasted 5,000 years on the backs of those traditions. So, I could see
this just being this global, great marketplace that lifts all boats, that
undoes what we’ve seen since 1971 where basically that’s the great chart where
from the beginning of the industrial revolution, productivity has risen 2%
every year. Wages did too up until ‘71 and then they flat lined and the lines
totally diverged. Well, that we’ll be able to get back and essentially let
people earn their fair share of the productivity gains.

Cory Klippsten: So,
yeah, I’m super hopeful. I think Bitcoin will keep what happens with treasuries
in check, and with the dollar in check, with the Euro in check, and what
happens with Zimbabwean dollars and everything else. Just having that available
that you can keep your money in your head and you can exit without physically
having to exit, and just the check that that provides. It only needs to reach a
certain size. I don’t know what it is, but it’s probably… Even if it matches
gold, that’s probably enough to end most tyranny.

Brady: Yeah.
Yeah.

Cory Klippsten: You
probably need $7 trillion worth of Bitcoin to stop tyranny from happening
most… And if you can like [inaudible 01:04:59].

Brady: Yeah,
disincentive this to-

Cory Klippsten: …
something that people can own. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Brady: Tyranny,
yeah.

Cory Klippsten: …
Most tyranny is enabled by the printing of money and capital controls. That’s
the first thing that happens. Argentina goes crazy in capital controls out of
nowhere, Hong Kong shuts down withdrawals from the ATM. We’re can’t do that
anymore because we’re good with mesh networks, we’re good with VPNs, we have
Tor 2.0. Bitcoin wallets are super easy, they’re easy to hide. It just gets
better from a UX standpoint. It’s just super easy to hold Bitcoin and transact
in Bitcoin. You just won’t have this chicanery, or as my father-in-law would
say this tomfoolery from these governments anymore. They just won’t be able to
get away with it.

Brady: Yeah,
yeah. Yeah, I think GiveBitcoin is going to be a big part of bringing the
masses around to that potential future. There’s definitely some education to
happen, knowing how to take control of your privacy and the reasons why you
want it to control your privacy, and route around these centralized modes of information
sharing that we’ve built up.

Brady: The
original vision of the internet was to create this decentralized network that
would be resistant to Black Swan events. And we’ve largely been gradually
centralizing since those early days with the decentralized ethos of the
internet. We have these massive data silos now, and it’s turned into a way for
governments and corporations to spy on people and track people. Bitcoin is
incentivizing this future of returning to that decentralization and enabling
the tools that we need. Like you mentioned mesh networks and Tor 2.0, and all
that stuff. It’s just part of the Bitcoin infrastructure.

Brady: That’s,
I think, given me a ton of hope to think about a future like that as opposed to
continuing on the path that we’ve been on. No one wants to live in that kind of
an oppressive society. It’s just not a hopeful place to be.

Cory Klippsten: I
think you’re right, yeah. You’re definitely right. I think some of the stuff
that Giacomo Zucco and Luke Dashjr, the things that they talk about ensuring
that a preponderance of Bitcoiners really go full Bitcoin citizen, that weighs
heavily on my mind, creating what is initially custodial service. It kind of
has to be for the product… well, 100% has to be for the product to function
with double up and gifting and the Timelock, and set it and forget it, and all
that.

Cory Klippsten: It’s
incumbent upon us to truly educate people about self-sovereignty and make sure
that the majority of these people start stacking and taking it into their own
custody over time because that is what really inoculates Bitcoin from a future,
much like the internet where it used to be all about permission less. Because
we were just lazy and government turned a blind eye to most of what was going
on, we got lazy and we let it centralize. And then the government came in and
said, “Oh, well now that you’re a centralized, we need that back door.”

Cory Klippsten: And
so, that really is the risk to bit Bitcoin as well. And this was option three,
I think, Giacomo running through this on a recent podcast and they totally gave
me pause. I’ve already been thinking about this, but it’s made me even more
mission-driven to make sure that everyone that comes into Bitcoin through us
understands that if you’re capable in the least, you’re not indigent 95 or 12
years old or something, take custody of your Bitcoins and be a full Bitcoiner.

Brady: Yeah.
And it’s not that hard anymore. With the services like Unchained and Casa, it’s
really, really simple. And the UI UX is just getting better and better. You
have great support teams on both companies that are there to help you if you
have any questions whatsoever. Yeah, there’s really no reason, as you pointed.

Cory Klippsten: I’m
an advisor to Unchained, and love those guys. Let’s see how sponsorship goes.
Maybe I’ll get a little bee in their bonnet about this. You can get number two.
But, yeah, that is the risk, right? If most people just think about Bitcoin as
being something that sits in their account at their bank and the government
lets that happen for 20 or 30 years. If today maybe whatever it is, the
estimates are anywhere from two to 7 million Bitcoins are custodied in some way
today, if that creeps up and it ends up being like 70 or 80 or something like
that over time, and then the government decides, “Yeah, you know what, we’re
just going to go.” Or [inaudible 01:10:18] in some way, or at least come in and
get all the info and know who all the Bitcoiners are, whatever. That’s the
future-

Brady: Which
happened with gold, right?

Cory Klippsten: Yeah.

Brady: FDR
did it at the beginning of World War I.

Cory Klippsten: 33,
yeah.

Brady: World
War II. Yeah.

Cory Klippsten: World
War II, yeah. Confiscated it all.

Brady: Yeah.

Cory Klippsten: So,
yeah, I think it’s super important. Not confiscated, but forced the sale of it,
I should say.

Brady: Right.

Cory Klippsten: I
think it’s very important that we think about the things that have a 1% chance
of happening, if it would obliterate the whole thing, or a 10% chance of
happening and really think about inoculating ourselves against that. That’s why
we’re really focused on getting lots more Bitcoiners, getting the political and
the financial class of the United States in particular, to understand Bitcoin
and hold a lot and care, and be ready to take the opposing argument when the
Brad Sherman’s of the world come for your Bitcoin.

Cory Klippsten: We
just need to make sure that there’s lot of Senator Warren’s and Crapos’s’ out
there to argue the counterpoint and to be able to stand there armed and ready
with a lot of great memes, and a lot of great arguments, and a lot of
constituents prompting them to push forward on their probate coin agenda.

Brady: Yup.
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I think we can just mic drop it right there. I
think that’s a perfect way to end it. Really, thank you so much for coming on.
This was a ton of fun. I will certainly be cheering on and using GiveBitcoin. I
think it’s a great idea and mission, and I hope and think it will become a
tremendous success, man.

Cory Klippsten: Yeah,
we hope so too man. We love slanging that Bitcoin, man. We just want to sell a
lot of it.

Brady: Hell
yeah. Hell yeah. Get it out there, man. Education-

Cory Klippsten: GiveBitcoin
number go up.

Brady: That’s
right. GiveBitcoin number go up. We can all be on board with that, I think.

Cory Klippsten: Awesome.

Brady: All
right man. Thanks again. Take care, dude.

Cory Klippsten: Thanks,
Brady.

Brady: All
right, all right, all right. Thanks again to Cory for joining me today. So,
what do you all think about GiveBitcoin? What do you all think about the
conversation we just had? Lots of great stuff raised, especially toward the end
there about Bitcoin’s prospects, about the macro-economic situation, how things
are going to play out. Let us know your thoughts about any and all of those
things on Bitcoin Twitter. Cory is @coryklippstein at C-O-R-Y
K-L-I-P-P-S-T-E-N. GiveBitcoin is @Give_Bitcoin, and I of course, I’m
@CitizenBitcoin.

Brady: You
can support the podcast by sharing it out on Bitcoin Twitter or share with your
family and friends. In fact, send them some Bitcoin and Bitcoin education with
GiveBitcoin, and then tell them to subscribe to the Citizen Bitcoin podcast and
we’ll help you turn them into wisened hodlers.

Brady: All
right, before I go, my open-source shout out for this week is Zap. Jack
Maller’s lightning wallet project has evolved into one of the most important
Bitcoin opensource projects. Just yesterday, the Zap project hit 1000 stars on
GitHub. They’ve built an incredible open-source community around this project.
Zap is now available on iOS, Android, Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. Just connect
to your L&D node to get started. You can support the project by joining the
Zap, GitHub and Slack to help test beta releases, request features, provide
feedback, and of course, coding. So, yeah, that’s it for this one. Take care
out there Bitcoiners, wherever you happen to be in the world.

GiveBitcoin makes it easy for you to buy Bitcoin for others, knowing that GiveBitcoin will help them understand it. Give them their first taste of Bitcoin, timelock it so they can’t spend it right away, and educate them on why it’s the best form of money we’ve ever had so they “hodl” for the long term. For more information or to join our email list, visit GiveBitcoin.io.